THEOLOGY, HISTORY, and ETHICS
TRADITION AND APOCALYPSE An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief David Bentley Hart
In this carefully argued essay, David Bentley Hart critiques the concept of “tradition” that has become dominant in Christian thought as fundamentally incoherent. He puts forth a convincing new explanation of Christian tradition, one that is obedient to the nature of Christianity not only as a “revealed” creed embodied in historical events but as the “apocalyptic” revelation of a history that is largely identical with the eternal truth it supposedly dis- closes. Hart shows that Christian tradition is sustained not simply by its preservation of the past, but more essentially by its antici- pation of the future. He offers a compelling portrayal of a living tradition held together by apocalyptic expectation—the promised transformation of all things in God. “Tradition is not the preservation or development of a body of knowledge or cultic practices but the continuity of faith in and hope of the final apocalypse when all that re- mains is love—so argues Hart in this brilliant book, which bristles with insights that are sure to both provoke and encourage.” —JOHN BEHR, University of Aberdeen “ Tradition and Apocalypse invites readers to abandon every anxious traditionalism in order to inhabit the only kind of tradition Christianity can actually be: that strange discursive tradition—patient and radical, generous and revolutionary—demanded by the permanent ferment of its apocalyptic origin and its final telos in the coming of the Kingdom of God. We have dogma and history only as we find them suspended between the advent and the final apotheosis of the Gospel apocalypse. That faith must own both dogma and history in this way is the summons of this extraordinary book.” —PHILIP G. ZIEGLER, University of Aberdeen; author of Militant Grace
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David Bentley Hart (PhD, University of Virginia) is a philosopher and Orthodox theologian. He has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of St. Thomas, Loyola College in Maryland, Providence College, and Saint Louis University. In 2015, he was granted a Templeton Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Hart has written numerous books, including The Beauty of the Infinite , The New Testament: A Translation , The Devil and Pierre Gernet , Theological Territories , and That All Shall Be Saved .
CONTENTS 1. Tradition and Traditionalism 2. Tradition and Causality 3. Tradition and Development 4. Tradition and History 5. Tradition and Doctrine 6. Tradition and Apocalypse 7. Tradition as Apocalypse Index
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